A lot of office workers these days spend a lot of time in video calls.

So to get the best battery life you need, for example, your browser to use GPU-accelerated video encoding and decoding.

Linux is something of a second-class citizen for both GPU vendors and browser vendors. So for example if you're using Firefox and an nvidia GPU on Linux? No video encode/decode acceleration for you. The browser will silently switch to CPU decoding.

This translates into worse battery life.

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pwnna 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

HW video decoding is now available and by default on in Chrome on at least Ubuntu with my Intel iGPU. I was also surprised when they turned it on under the radar. I saw this the other day debugging a problem and saw others see it too: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1ojydv9/comment/nm8...

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temp0826 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

HW decoding works fine. But some distros (looking at you Fedora) have legal issues around providing it out of the box.

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giancarlostoro 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Call me crazy, but most people working typically leave their laptops wired in to either a charger or a hub so they can have more monitors. I know some people will go through the effort of charging and pulling the cord, and charging later, but most people don't want to micromanage something they can forget about while working. If you're living on battery life for a work call, it would not matter if you're on Windows, changes are high your batterly life will self-terminate quicker than you realize.

	▲	michaelt 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Among Linux users, long battery life is for in-office workers (who leave their desk to attend meetings) in hybrid companies (where no meetings are laptop-free) in roles that sometimes involve back-to-back meetings.
	▲	mmcnl 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		CPU decoding/encoding for video means warm chassis + spinning fans. Fan noise is very annoying with video calls.

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JohnTHaller 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Firefox has had GPU video decoding in Linux on by default since 2023 for Intel and 2025 for AMD from what I've read